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Comment by GJim | Hacker News Reader

> sellout trash

A trifle offtopic, but.....

In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.

With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like hackers).

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This is exemplified in Wayne's World product scene. I later found out none of the companies shown in the scene had paid for their products to be in the scene. Its also one of the most iconic scenes from the movie.

This is insightful. But I'm not sure it's completely true, I think people just have shifted their perception of what selling out means.

Content creators on YouTube, for example, get criticized when they literally sell their brand to a larger conglomerate. It seems people do not complain if they do sponsorizations tho.

> Content creators

I'd argue the very words creating "content" implies something commercial is already in mind and is a driver, rather than just doing your own thing online and not caring (such showing a video of your band/hobby on YouTube in case anybody is interested).

To a Gen-X'er, the former sounds like they are already a sell out :-)

I certainly agree with you that perceptions have shifted.

I agree with you and I find the term "creating content" awful, even though I'm forced to use it because it's something people immediately understand.

"Content creator"... what happened to artist, playwright, painter, hobbyist, etc? It makes it seem as if they were making stuff for a corporation to sell.

That is what is happening though. It's an accurate description. These are cases of making content for corporations to sell ads against.

It is what's happening in some cases, not all. Also, language shapes thought, so we encourage this to happen if we frame it as "content creation". It's something to push against.

Note it's not even relevant whether something is commercial. Art can be commercial and not be just "content". A musician is not a "content creator" which happens to create content in the shape of music. "Content" implies it doesn't really matters, what matters is engagement and the platform (and advertisers, etc). It's not healthy to think of hobbies, art, and entertainment as exclusively about this. Imagine if Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, Alan Moore, etc had been thought of merely as "content creators".

This is not a new idea. Stallman was already pushing back against this "content" term decades ago.

Content is the filler in the limited space between ads.

Content is an intentionally chosen word in order to make "feeding from the corporate trough" not seem so repulsive.

Imagine Davinci putting ads for the Medici money lending services into his paintings. That's where we're at now.

In a sense, society sold out

Everyone’s got to eat, and it started getting a lot harder after 2000 and especially after 2008. Gen X could afford integrity.

I’m reminded of the scenes in My Fair Lady where Eliza’s father comes in to money, and he’s lamenting that he can afford “middle-class morality.”

I feel that statement is still hedging too much.

Society sold out.

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